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Jean Swanson plans to target renovictions in first Vancouver City Council motion

VANCOUVER—A longtime anti-poverty activist who recently won a Vancouver City Council seat is drafting her first motion, and it will focus on protecting tenants from a process known as renoviction.

Jean Swanson said her motion will ask the province to implement vacancy control — which would prevent landlords from raising the rent for a unit when a new tenant moves in — and better protect tenants through the city’s existing tenant relocation and protection guidelines.

“(Apartment buildings are) being bought at high prices with the landlord assuming they’ll be able to rent them out at a higher rent than tenants are currently paying,” said Swanson, the sole Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) candidate to be elected to council.

“Anything the government does to build social housing is nullified by all of these affordable apartments becoming luxury apartments.”

Despite a rate of change policy in the city that prevents developers from tearing down apartment buildings unless they replace the lost units in a new building, the trade in rental apartments has been brisk over the past few years: 150 buildings changed hands in 2017 while 39 buildings were sold in the first six months of 2018, according to the Goodman Report.

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At the same time, Vancouver’s vacancy rate has remained at under 1 per cent while rent rates have risen sharply.

It’s common for tenants to start feeling apprehensive and fearing the worst as soon as they hear that their building has been sold, said David Hendry, a steering committee member of the Vancouver Tenants Union.

Under Vancouver’s current guidelines, landlords must put in place a tenant relocation plan if they are demolishing or renovating a rental building and the city’s financial compensation rates are higher than what is required by provincial law.

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But some tenants who are facing renoviction say they have questions about how the city’s guidelines are being interpreted. Andre Duchene helped organize his West End building, Berkeley Tower, after tenants learned they would have to move out because the new owner planned to do extensive renovations.

Duchene is pushing the city to take into account a Supreme Court decision that found a Residential Tenancy Brand arbitrator erred in failing to consider whether a landlord needed to end a renter’s tenancy in order to do the renovation.

The B.C. government subsequently issued a guidance to the Residential Tenancy Board in May 2018 that said the Residential Tenancy Act does “not allow a landlord to end a tenancy for the purpose of renovations or repairs if … it is possible to carry out the renovations or repairs without ending the tenancy (i.e. if the tenant is willing to temporarily empty and vacate the unit during the renovations or repairs and then move back in once they are complete).”

Duchene said he’d like to see the city require landlords do a “proper assessment into whether evictions are necessary to renovate — specifically if tenants have said they’ll to move out in order to accommodate renovations.”

But the building’s owner, Reliance Properties, has disputed Duchene’s interpretation of the guidance. In a previous interview, Jon Stovell, president of Reliance Properties, said little work had been done by the previous owner on the 60-year-old building and renovations are badly needed. He also said current rents are too low to make the building profitable, which Reliance bought for $42 million in 2016.

Kennedy Stewart, Vancouver’s new mayor-elect, has also promised to put renters front and centre as he takes office: he’s said he will create a renters’ advocacy office “to make sure renters are treated fairly and stop renoviction.” Stewart says the office would stop renovictions by providing “information, advocacy and legal assistance to renters during tenancy disputes and reinforce the city’s renoviction policy.”

An inaugural council meeting will be held on Nov. 5, and the first regular council meeting takes place a week later on Nov. 13.

Jen St. Denis is a Vancouver-based reporter covering affordability and city hall. Follow her on Twitter: @jenstden

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